Leanda Lee
I don’t seem to have the words. My language appears foreign to others. I speak, they apparently understand but it doesn’t elicit an appropriate response. I’m environmentally aware and becoming more radically greener as a consequence of the affluent world around me becoming less so. To be carbon neutral is easier said than done. And it’s becoming harder to explain why I do what I do without looking eccentric.
I’d thought people had got the message by now and been educated about the importance of minimising their individual carbon footprint. It’s simply about utilising a minimum level of resources in our daily lives. The message is harder to deliver to people in communities more recently developed, such as in China or Macau, especially when the economies have developed rapidly and citizens have other priorities. Development uses resources, but at some point the use can become wasteful; we can suffer affluenza. After all, that’s what luxury is – unnecessary consumption.
A recent trip to USA left me perturbed. This is the country that has contributed most to overall global carbon emissions, but also as a well-educated and developed nation, it should be well on its way to sustainable consumerism. I’d learnt from an earlier trip that it was difficult to purchase coffee in a cup that wasn’t destined for landfill. This time, I was prepared and took my own KeepCup® on my travels. (KeepCup is a Melbourne-originated global initiative for behavioural change within our convenience coffee-culture.) The reusable cup is barista standard size, so most cafes happily fill it with my morning dose, some even offering a BYO discount. But in the States, on the 1/7th Strip, I came across a problem at a café in the Venetian. Apparently, officious health regulations wouldn’t allow the barista to make the coffee in my precious KeepCup. However, they suggested, they could make it in their throw-away cup and I could transfer it to my own. Glory be! How to defeat two purposes: health regulatory intent and environmental protection! Lost for words, I did without that morning.
And at Starbucks, Universal Studios a week or so earlier, I’d not brought my cup, but on billboards they advertise their coffee in real ceramic vessels. I’d have one of those, I said. The barista wasn’t keen to provide me with a ‘real cup’ as they often get stolen and he’d have his wages docked if I absconded. I promised to sit within view and he let me do without the ubiquitous symbol of the throw-away culture.
My problem remains that I don’t have the words: Not the words to explain to teenage guests why taking more food than needed and tossing the remainder is not only wasteful but disrespectful to host, cook, farmer and the animal that was grown for our consumption. They are taught about global poverty, saving the environment and sustainability but don’t make the connection to their own lives and behaviours. Not the words to offer a 15-second sound bite to supermarket check-out staff why when I bring my own bags, I don’t want my dairy foods wrapped in yet more plastic. Not the words to explain to dear friends why I’d prefer not to join them for dinner if the choice is buffet. Not the words to explain why an imperfect moth-nibbled local pear is far superior to the unblemished, polished one carted hundreds of miles and delivered to a refrigerated shelf on a plastic-wrapped polystyrene tray: And, bananas and oranges, don’t they come in their own wrapping? Not the words to express my disgust at the mountains of packaging that go into my bins each month; each week; each day. Not the words to protest against what our love affair with plastic coffee pods says about our values (Nespresso, a “Design for Unsustainability” abomination: 28 billion sold in 2013. The nearest used-capsule collection point is IFC Mall, HK – not so convenient.)
I will eventually find the words and the sound-bites. I will find a way to leave my foot-print, just not a carbon one. But I might need a little help.
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